BudPod with Phil Wang & Pierre Novellie - Episode 2 - Most Authoritarian, Most Libertarian

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

Welcome back! Phil Wang and Pierre Novellie discuss their Most Authoritarian thoughts and Least Authoritarian thoughts, also including:. Pervert or Japanese? Blimptons Unrefined Oats, Most Authoritarian and Most Libertarian, Legal Blackmail, Sugar Eagle, F*cking Idiot Registration, Murdertown, Speeding North, Speeding Common, Marjorie Returns! Email us at [e-mail] or tweet us @thebudpod and don't forget to rate us on iTunes and like and subscribe! Get bonus BudPod on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, it's the second episode. It's number two of Budpod. Mm-hmm. Thank you for coming back. Yes, I hope you've been all right. Thank you for returning to our bosoms. And thank you for liking the first one enough to try the second one or being strange enough to try the second one first.

Or not understanding your podcast app yes it can be confusing sometimes they order them like it starts at the big they've really fucked it up yeah especially recently i swear every time i go on the podcast app on on my iphone it's they've changed the order of most recent first yes or most recent last and it wants you to have subscribed to everything or it will refuse to show you anything past 2016. Sometimes. It's dog shit. Yeah, so... So thank you for negotiating that.

Or maybe you're listening to this on accident because you're trying to play a different podcast. In which case, stick around. You've made a great choice. Or thank you for being weird enough if you're listening to the second episode after hating the first one, that is you are the kind of person who is almost too scrupulous

in giving things a fair old go. Hey, the audio masochism is a big dollar out there. Ooh, that's the opposite of ASMR. Yeah. Listen to stuff that just makes you sick. Just nails on blackboards, polystyrene squeaking, balloons. I bet that's big in Germany. Yeah, Germany and one other country that is like weird,

that comes up a lot. Where was that? Japan. Japan. It's Japan. If you lost the Second World War, your sex is weird. That's a rule. I was saying last night that this gig, it's funny to me that the only two types of people on earth who speak Japanese are Japanese people and perverts.

Right? It's like the Bitcoin of languages. You're either very competent or you're in you're a pedophile yeah yeah it's and like somewhere in the intersection between those two is someone who's like desperately trying to get their hands on a firearm an untraceable firearm you go you could be competent and a pervert. I don't know. Yeah, there's some skills that are inherently suspect. Yeah, Japanese is unfortunately one of them.

If you're a white guy who knows Japanese, I'm not taking my eyes off you. Yeah, if you're a white guy and you're fluent in Japanese, every aspect of your personal appearance will be found weird by me. Because it's like that thing where everyone's mugshot makes them look like a criminal. Because it's like passport photos are bad, you know? So, like, okay, so can we imagine, can you and I imagine a white guy who can speak fluent Japanese

who we can't find suspicious from looking at him? Because, okay, obviously, the archetype that we'd be the most suspicious of, white guy, in his 30s, fluent in Japanese, long, greasy ponytail. Always. Dark, dark hair. Dark hair.

He's got... His t-shirt's either heavy metal or anime. Or like heavy metal anime. Or something sort of like a meme. A weird little t-shirt. One piercing. Yeah, and not a very good... I reckon like lip.

Yeah, or eyebrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cargo pants. Cargo pants. Those, maybe in the earlobe, one of those tunnels. Tunnel hair. Yes.

And a couple of leather wristbands. And he hasn't decided if he wants a fucking beard or not. Yes. Yeah. It's that thing of like no one should have facial hair where the hair is just. Yeah. What is it about liking East Asia that makes you grow facial hair like an East Asian? It's not a coincidence, isn't it?

They've absorbed it so much. I can't, I don't have, my facial hair exists in the Goldilocks, the hellish Goldilocks point of it grows enough that I have to shave it, but not enough that if I leave it, it will come to anything. That's the worst. It grows just enough to be a blemish on my face, but no more. So I do shave, but I don't have the choice of leaving it to grow. Yeah.

You've got 100% of the effort. It's maintenance, not choice, my shaving. You've got 100% of the effort. It's maintenance, not choice. Yeah. My shaving. You've got 100% of the effort with none of the benefit. It's like if someone just said, by the way, every morning you have to shower like normal. You know, you shampoo your hair and you shower gel on your body or whatever. And then you also just have to shower this mannequin. What happens if I don't shower the mannequin?

Whether you have a moldy, disgusting mannequin in your house. There's no gain to this. This is just an extra thing to do. Yeah, this is another job. Bad, bad, bad. Well, when I was out in Japan, there's a name,

they're aware of this. Are they? There's a name for... Oh, that's so embarrassing. For white guys who've come over and speak Japanese. Oh, that's so embarrassing. They're called LBHs.

Really? Losers back home. Japan! That is brutal. And that's like by native Japanese people. I'm not sure. I think, I feel like it's a joint effort between the expats there and the Japanese people. Right, we've joined forces to categorize these people.

Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah, because there must be a lot of confused Japanese people. If you're Japanese and you don't live in a major urban area, you just live somewhere quite rural in Osaka or whatever, and you're just like, you and your buddies are hanging out, and you're like, you know how we get those young white backpackers and stuff through here sometimes?

And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do they smell so bad? And they're always wanking. And they bow a lot. If you're like a modern Japanese person, they'll be like, I mean, I bow, but these guys really bow. And they speak in this formal, fluent Japanese. I don't know where they learned it.

Yeah, exactly. They address me as like honorable farmer, peasant or whatever. And it's like, well, I guess. Like, it must be super strange. Like, imagine if you just lived in Derby or whatever in England and you're constantly beset by a trickle of Japanese people who dress like Bertie Wooster. Like waistcoat pocket watchers.

And they say, I say, my dear fellow, in like perfect English, but it's like, I say, my dear fellow, I've come here from Tokyo, from the Far East. Do you know of a public house I could refresh myself in this afternoon? You're like, what the fuck is happening? We'll meet. We'll meet, my fine fellow. It is a pleasure to meet you.

What is happening? They have a monocle and a top hat and stuff. It's so weird. I really like your punch cartoons. I'm an avid reader. I saw a caricature of Lloyd George. It was most cutting. You'd be baffled by it.

Are you a member of any clubs? Point me to your nearest pornography. I've come to sample your pornography. We're big fans where I come from of your pornography. So is there a way a guy can look that you wouldn't be like, why does he speak Japanese? Japanese, I guess. Oh, no.

I was out drinking coffee or tea or hot drink that requires extra sugar, but I was foolish enough to choose the veranda. I chose the veranda, and now I can't get the attention of the waiter inside. He's busy with a woman's thrown up, and I can't get it. There's no sugar. They forgot to put sugar in the bowls of sugar on the veranda tables. And now I'm stuck out here with an unsweetened, bitter, hot drink. What am I going to do? Sugar Eagle.

Sugar Eagle is the new sugar-based aerial solution, or aerial-based sugar solution, for the guy on the go. Sugar Eagle. Sugar Eagle. If you are outdoors on the veranda having a hot drink and there's no sweetener available and you can't get the attention of the waiter because he's comforting a woman who's thrown up,

is that bad? I don't know. The glass is kind of darkened, so it's hard to see inside this cafe. It's one of those. The Sugar Eagle, a trained handler, follows you on a rooftop level, much like Batman, and with an eagle on one enormous leather glove and a pocket full of sugar lumps that he can

sellotape to the eagle's claw. The eagle has been trained to deploy the sugar directly above, or as close as it can get to above, your hot drink mid-sip. There are plans to replace the eagles with drones, but don't let that happen.

Support your local Sugar Eagle trainer. Sugar Eagle. And do not allow the mechanization of this once proud industry. Sugar Eagle. Sugar Eagle. When you want to avoid sugar from every angle, except from above.

Ground sugar is only deployed by Falcons. Sugar Eagle. by Falcons. Sugar is good. We reach our weekly segment that doesn't happen every week. Our fortnightly segment.

Maybe. A lot of... It's a regular segment. It's a regular feature. And just like on my favorite podcast, stuff's going to happen, and it's going to be stuff that you recognize as being a feature, but it's not always going to happen. Sure.

So get on board, everyone. And in this segment in particular, it will be the most authoritarian and most libertarian thoughts that Phil and I have been having. Initially, we were considering doing a sort of left-wing, right-wing thing to try and represent how people have left-wing, right-wing, you know, different feelings. But left-wing and right-wing don't really mean anything anymore. So authoritarian versus libertarian is the spectrum that we'd rather have. Also, the most left-wing thing and the most right-wing thing,

if you're actually treating those as going to the actual extremes, you end up doing the same thing. People I don't like should be in camps. Well, okay, that could be a lot of countries. Exactly. You get the rhetorical equivalent of those scenes in Paris of the two different yellow vested gangs fighting each other yeah on the far left and the far right and you literally can't you genuinely can't tell

they've literally turned up wearing the same color they've they've they've they've made a visual metaphor for their own politics and also not not it's quite funny now, because normally people used to say things like, brown is red. Because, like, the brown shirts are the fascists in Germany. And red is obviously, you know, hard communist. Oh, right. So they'd be like, oh, it doesn't matter if they're wearing brown scarves or brown neckerchiefs or red neckerchiefs kind of thing.

And I was just like, if they're wearing a yellow vest, they're a cunt. That's essentially what it boils down to. Or they're just trying to help you park at a festival. Yeah. Either way, they're frustrating and they cause a lot more problems than they're trying to solve. So, the most authoritarian thought I had

is inspired by Singapore. And I thought to myself the other day, yeah, we should ban chewing gum. we should ban chewing gum. We should ban chewing gum. I will say it was when I was sat next to a person on the tube who was wearing massive

noise-canceling headphones and was chewing chewing gum the way a terrorist would chew chewing gum. You really hate mouth sounds. It's especially bad for you. I hate mouth sounds and chewing. But even, I would say, this person's chewing was so egregious that even a normal person would look up and be like,

what the hell are you doing? Like, you'd worry about your dog if it chewed like this. You'd be like, I'm taking him to the vet, because even from a dog, that level of noise is weird. It's like he's trying to chew around his own teeth. And then I just thought, ban it. And then I thought, oh, no, but chewing gum is like a nice thing. And I thought, no, it's not.

Yeah, I never remember really enjoying a bit of chewing gum. You just enjoy sugar. It's shit. Yeah, because it's great for like the first 10 seconds. And then you go, there's rubbery garbage in my mouth. Also, after, like you say, 10 seconds, then you just go, this is like if I wanted to, this is like I want a stronger jaw. Yeah, it's like training. Why am I rehearsing for food?

Yeah. This is a rehearsal for when I can actually eat food. Make sure I can chew right. Bootcamp. Lunch. I was about to call it a mouth audition, but that sounds like a horrible euphemism. Mouth audition.

I think that's a Pornhub category. Coming for a mouth audition. So, complete ban, no imports. Just ban, don't even make it, can't even make it. Because it's like fake... Will you be able to stand pressure from Big Wrigley? Big Wrigley? Will you be able to take... I mean, that's? Big Wrigley? Will you be able to take...

I mean, that's... Big Wrigley is going to come for you. He's a very famous jazz musician. And on the xylophone, it's Big Wrigley. Big Wrigley can fuck off. It's a waste of... Hey, you don't know what you're saying. Hey, hey, hey.

It's a waste of resources. It's literally food that's designed to give you no nutrition and then be put in a bin it's like the most decadent unbelievably wasteful thing and the food has to come in paper made from a packet made from paper and metal

this is an outrageous throw it in the bin after you've been chewing it it's gross and weird yeah it's quite a synthesis of dietary in the bin after you've been chewing it. It's gross and weird. Yeah, it's kind of, it's quite a synthesis of dietary supplement almost. Like you could see it going to

like burger flavored ones. Like when you want a burger instead of just having burger flavored chewing gum and see how it tastes. Like a Willy Wonka thing. Kardashians sell that on Instagram, right?

Like these lollipops. Food gum. No, they're like appetite. Suppressing lollies. Yes. Yeah, they were trying to suppressing lollies. Yes. Yeah, they were trying to sell those, weren't they? Because it's amazing to me how much people, like with the Kardashians selling stuff or anyone selling stuff on Instagram,

people are so desperate to be scammed. They're just like, oh God, I hope they scam me. It's so strange. I think it was a tweet in some very well-observed, someone said Instagram is just, is now just QVC for millennials. It's so strange. I think it was a tweet and something very well observed. Someone said Instagram is now just QVC for millennials. That's great.

I saw that. That's perfect, isn't it? It is. And also it's so strange because if it's a new product, that's some kind of fucking horrible astronaut food compressed into a lolly or whatever. And the Kardashians are like, this is great. You know that that product is not how they got to be how they are now. Yeah, exactly.

You know that. Whereas if... Because it didn't exist. Exactly. Whereas if like an Olympian was like, hey, did you know the secret to my marathon running, having enough energy, was like really like unrefined oats. Yeah.

And Blimpton's unrefined oats thank you for sponsoring the podcast by the way uh blimpton's unrefined oats is a wonderful source of that then you'd go oh conceivably that's unrefined oats for the refined gentleman well you know like they asked usain bolt um what his diet was. Yeah. His training diet. And he just said Jamaican food. Just eats plantains. Yeah. And fucking rice and peas. He just eats.

He carb loads. He eats loads of food, protein and carbohydrates. Like there's no secret formula to it. What secret food do you eat? I eat food. Yeah. That's the secret. Eat some fucking food.

I mean, in the Olympics, everyone just eats loads of pasta. Yeah. That's what they eat, obviously. Of course. And it's the thing of like, hey, did you know that you can lose weight by eating less? I did know that. Because I'm aware of Newtonian physics, thanks to physics GCSE, energy in, energy out. It doesn't matter what the energy is.

There was that American professor who lost weight on Oreos. Okay. He was just trying to prove, like, look, I'm eating Oreos and broccoli for fiber so he didn't clog himself up and die of just Oreo poo. Oreo poo, of course, comes in three distinct layers. This isn't brown poo. People break the poo apart and they... They don't get in the toilet.

They eat the middle. the middle of the poo is people's favorite you can't have just one um what's your most authoritarian i'm starting to get really annoyed by advertising and not in the boring Bill Hicks kind of... Wasn't it easy to be radical in the 90s? You know adverts, yeah? Well, I don't like them. Who is this renegade cowboy? They're trying to sell you things.

And everyone's like, oh my God, they are. And every advert I've seen has been trying to sell me something. This guy's a genius. This guy's seeing through the bullshit, man. This brilliant, smart guy knows the answer to everything and yet managed to drink himself to death. Yep. Anyway, that's very alcoholic shaming.

Yes, don't shame Bill Hicks for his alcoholism. Shame him for his filthy, disgusting smoking. Well, that's the thing. He was smoking to keep off the alcohol. He died of cancer. People would assume he died of smoking. It was bowel cancer from the alcohol. Or was it pancreatic?

I suppose bowel cancer. But it was from the booze. Yeah. You never think of booze as giving you cancer. You don't, but it sure will, apparently. I guess it's that thing of like, would you like a pint of sadness chemicals? For some reason, yes. I was thinking like if something gives you cancer, it's going in your that thing of like, would you like a pint of sadness chemicals? And you go, I would for some reason, yes.

I was thinking like if something gives you cancer, it's going in your body and like literally like scratching. Like fizzing. I guess it's the bubbles in beer. Maybe it's just the bubbles. If you drink wine and vodka, you're fine. It seems to make more sense with something with bubbles. But because I've been thinking a lot about self-obsession. I read a couple of good books about it and writing a stand-up show about it.

And so I've become ironically obsessed with self-obsession, the idea of self-obsession. And when you start to become aware of it, when you start to become aware of our general mass obsession with ourselves, you can't unsee it. You see it in everything. You see it in advertising especially. with ourselves. You can't unsee it. You see it in everything. You see it in advertising especially.

And our adverts over the last couple of decades have really honed in on appealing to the individual. And of course, the internet's made that especially easy now because you just have a profile that you're building

for advertisers online. You can live in your own little world. But like adverts that say, this is your gym. It's like, no. Everyone has to use the same gym. It's not like you can just walk in at any time and if the weights are in use, you go, no, this is my weight.

This is my gym. The advert said so. But it's such an illogical, ridiculous extreme. I saw an advert on a bus, a tourism advert. It was like this big picture of a beautiful island in the Mediterranean yeah and it said

discover your Italy your Italy I don't have an Italy I just want to discover the Italy there's one Italy you either like it

or you don't it's not like you've not found my oh this pasta's not like you've not found my oh this pasta sucks. I guess I've not found my Italy yet. Where's my maybe it's

But also whenever anyone says like whenever anyone takes a place and brings it down to the level of the individual it's always because it's shit.

So it's like if someone goes oh my god England is so green and lovely and whatever and someone goes well I'm from Coventry

that's terrible. That's an advert aimed at the kind of people who are surprised that different bits of different places are different well yeah, so it's it's a dishonest advert they should say discover the ideal version of Italy which is the tourism places and not

the slums and the poor parts of Rome because that's no one's Italy it's not like you're going to which is the tourism places and not sort of the slums and the poor parts of Rome. Because that's no one's Italy. It's not like you're going to... I mean, I guess for some people. But you'd even then, you'd want to go to the bits that are excitingly shit, like, oh, it's full of Sicilian bandits.

You wouldn't just be like, yeah, it's kind of quite a dull sort of middle-class suburb of Milan where there's not a lot of amenities. And it's actually quite rainy. It actually rains quite a lot. Yeah, unemployment's a bit of a problem. Wow, wow! Tuscany! The schools aren't great. They're my Italy! Delicious! This is my Italy.

It's boring and it's all about the local mayors trying to incentivize people to purchase new housing. Yeah, that's not a... But I have a real bugbear with adverts phrasing things badly in general. I like this idea of the nounification of verbs or adjectives. Find your amazing.

Ugh. You know? We sell delicious. Oh, God. We do yummy. Just buy a box of yum-yums. Oh, God. It's so infantilizing. So it's like you're an individual,

but you're still a little baby. Yeah. You're an individual, but you're fucking three years old. Which I guess is the sinister undercurrent of all advertising. But if you're skilled at it, you hide it.

You hide the infantilcurrent of all advertising. But if you're skilled at it, you hide it. You hide the infantilization of your audience. But this is what I've always said about, like, when a dictator fixes an election. Don't tell me you got 99.9% of the vote. Like, show me some fucking respect. Like, I'm not an idiot. I know I live in a dictatorship. 61%.

Show me some class. That's why Putin is clever. Putin always wins. He doesn't even probably need to fake the elections, to be honest. But even if he did fake them, he wouldn't do a Zimbabwe. Just show me some respect. Itzu, I think, is

eat beautiful. Yeah! And you just go, what does that mean? Because first of all, the actual grammatically correct way of phrasing that would be eat beautifully. And you say, okay, so I should look resplendent as I'm eating

anything. Or eat beautiful food. Yeah. And even if they mean eat beautiful food, what a shit selling point for a restaurant it is also quite a sinister tagline when

all their artwork and imagery has no food on it and instead women in bikinis on beaches and just sort of so then it's like

it becomes a silence of the lambs thing it's beautiful what you call that woman yeah eat beautiful eat beautiful hi beautiful

eat beautiful eat beautiful only eat Hi beautiful. Hi beautiful. Can you eat beautiful? Eat beautiful. Only eat the beautiful things. Put them in the... Only beauty can touch my tongue. Yeah, then it becomes a scribbled note at the scene of a fucking slaying. It's super unnerving.

I have to eat beautiful. I have been commanded to eat beautiful. Like a hideous ghoul. What was the other one? Eat beautiful. I have been commanded to eat beautiful. Like a hideous ghoul. What was the other one? Eat beautiful. It's something from fucking Seven when he saws the lady's nose off. It's because I was beautiful.

He made me eat beautiful. It's so gross. There was a... Oh, I saw one the other day. It's eat beautiful. Live good. You know, things like that. We're losing adverbs in general because Americans don't use them.

Right, yeah, yeah. He ran so quick. Yeah, yeah. He did good. He ran quickly. He did good. He behaved very professional. Oh, did they say that?

Yeah. He was very professional. He behaved very professional. Oh, did they say that? Yeah. He was very professional or he behaved very professionally. But they just go, he behaved very professional and he ran very quick. And you're just like... And I get annoyed with people who go like,

hey man, language changes and evolves. Yeah, I know that. But like, there's a level at which you need to be taught specific words and strict grammar for things like, you know, the rule of law. All of society is based on a clear, very, very clear, specific understanding of language. All the contracts you pretend to read before you just click accept. The point of grammar is to remove ambiguity, right? Yes. And so if the language you're using is ungrammatical but unambiguous

as well, then fine. Yeah. But eat beautiful is certainly not unambiguous. Eat beautiful is so weird and badly phrased and clunky in your head that it's kind of like a kind of psychic attack. But you have remembered it, Pierre.

You've given them exactly what they wanted. You've remembered it. It's worked. We're talking about it now. It's like that, let me You've given them exactly what they wanted. You've remembered it. It's worked. We're talking about it now. It's like that Lemmy sketch. Give me exactly what he wanted. You got a reaction out of you. You got to give him that.

It's awful. But it seems like a bunch of coked up advertising executives of some kind got together and went, okay, what are the buzzwords for sushi, right? What is sushi? I think it's quite beautiful. Good, good, good. And they wrote beautiful. You eat it.

And they wrote eating. Why don't we just send this in? I actually think advertisers don't take coke anymore, and that's why advertising sucks now. Oh, like a reverse Mad Men theory. Yeah. It's like if they were battered on whiskey in the daytime like they should be. And just coke up to the eyeballs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We wouldn't be going all... That's my most libertarian and authoritarian thing, is that Coke should be illegal except for advertisers where it should be compulsory and forced upon them. So it's like people can only work in advertising for like five years.

Like they're... Because otherwise they just... Like they've been human trafficked. Fed drugs to do their jobs right until they're too old and have to be left out of the pasture. It's like in America where they drug test their employees

but to make sure they've been doing their drugs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's this version of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Discover your Italy is yeah. That's this version of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Discover your Italy is gross. It's gross. What do you think?

Tell us what you think. Tweet in. Yeah, yeah. That kind of thing. How about no? But they're doing like tweet in and it's like quite an involved, complicated diplomatic news story.

And you just think, why are you? Or like even on question time, it's like, and please let us know what you think at home. It's like, no, we've got enough fucking nutters in this studio. We have enough uneducated garbage going on

now. We have too much, actually. You just said you don't have time. Yeah. Don't add extra time for all the digital versions of the lunatics in this room. The lunatics that couldn't even get it together to get a ticket for the studio. Yeah, they were too visibly smeared with the blood of others to be let in.

And now you're letting them get in touch remotely through their phone. But yes, the relentless tide of individualism will drown us both, Phil. Can't wait. I'll drown better. I'll drown better than you. Find your way of drowning. Find your... Drown beautiful.

Hi. Remember, the 28th of February is the final deadline for registering as a fucking idiot. final deadline for registering as a fucking idiot. You need to send in your forms to register as a fucking idiot to HMRC for some reason. So make sure, if you don't register

as a fucking idiot, you won't be able to be a fucking idiot for the next year. So remember, send in your form to the government, apply for status as a fucking idiot. But, okay. 28th of February. Fucking idiot. So what is your most libertarian thought you've had?

I think it would be fine if you had a heavily regulated hallucinogen bar. And I don't mean like a full vial of LSD straight to the eyeballs or something. I mean like, can you imagine how cool it would be if in London somewhere you had like the Shroom Bar and it had like a lot of security. Like you couldn't just run into the Shroom Bar dressed as Dracula and fuck with people. Yeah.

You know, but it was like a lovely, it was almost like the chill out room at a festival. It was all like nice music and waterfalls and sort of lovely, you know, ambient. The thing about mushrooms is it's meant to be, you're meant to do it in nature. You're meant to do it inside. Garden center.

Okay. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Like a big garden center. Like a theme park. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be pretty big. Really slow roller coasters. Really slow roller coasters.

A small, small world would be great on Loaves of Mushroom. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Or maybe the mannequins would remind you of some kind of death. It's quite dark in a lot of the tunnels as well. We can figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the point is, I think that would be fine.

I don't think that would. And do you, is it BYOD? No, it's all very like. It's all on site. It's like getting. It's like bowling shoes. It's just like a rack of them, right? I would say that it's like there's a desk and it's like a pharmacy.

Okay, that's fine. And you have a little bit of paper. And also they can see what you've done before. Okay. So that stops some dipshit coming in age 19 and being like, I want all the LSD you have in my eyes right now because I'm a big man. I'm going to play the big man. It stops that.

They go, no, you can't. Yeah, you've got to build it. Legally, you have to start with little baby steps. Okay. On like a little one mushroom or whatever it is. And then they'll be fine. And you can sort of lead through and it's all like, it's expensive because of all this overhead or whatever.

Okay. You know, you can't be doing it every Friday night or something. But Pierre, you're actually excluding a lot of poorer people and a lot of people of lower means. Yeah. So maybe you can devise some sort of... There'd be a Wetherspoons of shroom pups. God, can you fucking imagine how depressing it would be? What would the equivalent be?

Oh, you know, it opens at 7am, people have a fry-up and a big pint of mushroom tea and sit there freaking out all day. But it's cheap. And you know what? They take good care of the cinemas that they take over and the old listed buildings. Very popular with regulars,

the elderly people on a budget who want to freak the fuck out. For a lot of people, it's a meeting point. It's a communal hub. Look, if you are old, Phil, and you're living on a pension, and you want to get absolutely out of your nut

and see unicorns on a budget, it is often your only option. What was that conversation we had at a Wetherspoons in Holloway Road where we were just loving the Wetherspoons we were loving it

and you said it was just you me I think Finn Taylor maybe yes Matt Ewins couple of comedians

and Ian Sterling voice of Love Island in a Wetherspoon yeah we were all hanging out oh that was it yeah I remember this now yeah it was like £2.50 for a pint of Brew Dog it was great of Love Island in a Wetherspoon. Yeah, we were all hanging out. Oh, that was it. Yeah, I remember this now.

It was like £2.50 for a pint of BrewDog. It was great. So cheap. And then we started ordering food and it was like, wow, I've just ordered like a tall burger. And we just ended up being there for like two, three hours. Yeah. And we were just going around the table going, this is great. Why don't we come to Wetherspoons more often? It's so good.

And then you said... And I said, this is great. Why don't we come to Wetherspoons more often? It's so good. And then you said... And I said, this is how it starts. You said, you know when you look around at Wetherspoons and you see a bunch of old fucks staring blankly into their pints and you think, I wonder how they started doing that. This is it. This is the

moment. This is what we've just started down a slippery slope. Yeah, I think that's definitely it. Also, for the purposes of balance, the guy who runs Wetherspoons is a fucking idiot. He's an idiot and a loon. Okay, so yours is

a... So I think shroom pubs, that'd be fine. But like highly regulated, like you want the kind of culture of regulation and discipline that you'd have in, like, Switzerland. But hallucinogens are rarely a problem drug. People high on hallucinogens don't really kill each other over shrooms and LSD. Yeah.

The only time hallucinogens are a problem drug when it's like someone gave this homeless guy a pint of angel dust and gave him a knife and let him loose in America. Yeah, okay. Maybe you have a point then. So that's, no, but that's a problem, but that's not going to happen with this fucking heavily regulated

playground, you know? It's going to be heavily taxed, so, you know, it's going to be more expensive than smoking, but it's going to be

a good news for the exchequer, feel me? At the end of the day, it's going to be a good news for the exchequer. Well, my most libertarian thought is, and I've thought,

believed this for a while, I think blackmail should be legal. I don't, I really don't, I honestly don't understand. When I found out blackmail was illegal, I was honestly surprised. What?

What are you talking about? If you have something on someone else, that's between you two to figure out. Why should the state come in to say i know that person did a naughty thing but it's not to you to use that to your advantage wait wait but what if it's not something illegal like what well okay so are you imagining that it's like oh they shot someone uh i know you shot bill yeah okay give me a thousand dollars a month yeah okay ever yeah i

think i should be allowed to do that but what if it's i know that you haven't had an affair uh-huh it's not legal no it's not legal but it is immoral and that person who's had an affair should pay for their moral act so you're seeing you're seeing blackmailers in this scenario as kind of arbitrarily assigned agents of cosmic justice. Yeah, like vigilantes. Like Robin Hood style vigilantes. We get money for punishing the unjust.

Okay, so it's kind of like a freelance gig economy punisher. Yeah, yeah, that's it, that's it, that's it. I think this all stems from your love of Batman. Oh, maybe you're right, actually. You sort of imagine these people as like a Batman that seeks to keep things between them and the villain. Yeah, yeah.

But what if it's something else? Can you convince me that blackmail is right, that blackmail is legal? What if it's just that someone's gay? Well, they shouldn't be so self-homophobic that they can't come out and admit it. So you're punishing them for their internalized homophobia. But what if they're gay and their family are like, they'd be in danger. Their family are like super hard right or super religious lunatics. They need to come to terms with their own homophobia and they need to accept this person as… But the blackmailer is not helping them do that.

The blackmailer just wants to profit from their desire to not deal with it. But the blackmailer is still punishing the accused for not handling their situation in the best possible way. Okay, but what about, right, someone really mean and cruel blackmails someone who's actually just really unfortunate, right? So let's say it's someone who is either like secretly gay but it has to be secret through no fault of their own and it's really like a problem for them

and they'd be in danger if they admitted it. Okay, so let's say this person comes from a very hardline religious family they're 16 yeah they're uh vulnerable yeah they are gay yeah they can't let people and their family know that not because of their own immaturity but because they'll be in physical they'll be in danger. Yeah. And this is like some, for some reason, a captain of industry, like a really rich man, decided to eke out a few more pounds a month. To just ruin someone's life.

Okay. Mr. Burns. I think that is actually a very valuable kick up the old ass for the 16 year old to get out of their home and make a new life. That's not the family for them. That's not the family for them. That's not the community for them. I think I have it. I think I have it.

So would you agree that it's also, therefore, an acceptable thing for – okay, so let's say that's happening, right? Evil, you know, the Monopoly man is blackmailing this kid. Then someone blackmails the Monopoly man, is blackmailing this kid. Mm-hmm. Then someone blackmails the Monopoly man. With what? They're doing a terrible, immoral piece of blackmail. So they're blackmailing them with the blackmail? Yeah.

Okay. And they're saying, I'll tell everyone that you spend your free time fucking harassing vulnerable gay 16-year-olds, you old lunatic. He loses the time for that. You lose yourolds, you old lunatic. He likes to type as well. You lose your investors, you lose all your advertising. But the only way that that can be,

the only way that the blackmailer can be blackmailed is if blackmail is illegal. And is taboo, right? Taboo, not illegal. But then if we made it legal. If you blackmail someone for being gay, being gay is not illegal. But then if we made it legal, I if we made it legal I put it to you that it would be really hard to blackmail people for doing blackmail

because everyone would just be like well tell people I don't care fair enough but just because blackmail is legal does not mean there will be no social repercussions to being found out to be blackmailing an innocent gay teenager there will still be social repercussions to that, just not legal.

I mean, I don't, obviously I don't think it should be legal. I don't know, it's sounding like you're coming around. No, I'm just interested in your perspective of like,

it is very libertarian because it does what a lot of libertarian stuff does and it implicitly trusts the public to self-regulate. Yeah, which I don't. I don't trust the public at all. No, of course not.

But I still, for some reason, I still think that's between you. But would you be happy to be blackmailed? Of course not. But I should have been more careful. I should have been more careful, and I'm mature enough to... That is such a disciplined, you know... You can tell you did a hard science at university kind of thing you can tell you're just like you know what it's bigger than me pierre if only more

people thought this way that's true it's bigger than this is greater than myself it's very it's very like uh communitarian in its own way weirdly it's a very libertarian idea but it's quite communitarian in the sense that like... It's egalitarian in a way. Yeah, society will regulate itself and benefit from this. Even if I am personally damaged by it. I'm willing to sacrifice my own love of, I don't know what you'd be blackmailed for,

whatever it is, blackmailing gay teenagers in your spare time. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I'm going to blackmail you for going to all these mushroom bars. Yeah. Ever since they banned chewing gum, you've replaced it with mushrooms, and I'm going to blackmail you over it. Because then you have to decide for yourself what is worth blackmailing and what isn't.

And you could overvalue your blackmail. what is worth blackmailing and what isn't. And you could overvalue your blackmail. You know, you could go in and say, I'm going to blackmail you for... I know that you are a man, but you wear women's underwear. Yeah.

And I'm going to blackmail you for that. And the other person goes, people are actually fine with that. No one cares. I'm going to blackmail you, and I'm going to tell everyone you thought that was a good blackmail. Unless you give me. So you can counter blackmail.

It'd be so fun. But this is now going to be like, everyone is essentially going to be living the same life as a high-ranking member of a one-party state. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what life's going to be like now. It's going to be the death of Stalin for all the time. So it's like, I'm going to blackmail you for having an affair.

Well, why were you in that hotel? I know your wife it's like, I'm going to blackmail you for having an affair. Well, why were you in that hotel? I know your wife is at home. I'm going to blackmail you. I'm going to blackmail you for being the kind of guy who puts cameras in people's rooms. So essentially life becomes this harrowing game of higher or lower. You know what? Just from that as an economic argument, how much time would waste

and how much the economy would slow down with people being busy blackmailing each other, I can now see why blackmail is illegal. But maybe it would be a really effective system of wealth transfer because no one would bother blackmailing a hobo. Maybe that's why communists love it so much. Because it's like... Because it's the great equalizer.

Shame is this great equalizer that... Yeah. The richer you are, the more likely you are to be blackmailable successfully. Yeah, that's a good point. So it's like taxes. It's like stratified taxes. Interesting. It's like the second that it was announced that I had to sold my company,

everyone was very interested in my porn habits, you know. That's the society we live in. Here in blackmail City. Maybe that would be quite funny, a series of sequels, because you know, Sin City? Yeah.

Then like, every city has its own sin. But otherwise, everyone's really well paid. Like smaller hamlets and towns, like Blackmailsville. Blackmailsville. Yeah.

Obviously there's Sin City, but it's fed by all the commuter towns, Blackmailsville, and Bezeltton, Murderton. It's written Murdertown, but it's pronounced Murderton. Yeah, Speeding North. Speeding North and Speeding Central. Speeding Common is where you get off.

And, of course, grievous bodily harm on the river. It's all hyphenated. Hello. No one is available to take your call. Please leave a message after the tone. Oh, yes. Hello. Hello. I'm just calling the IKEA helpline. Hello, IKEA. Could you help me, please? I know you're not here, not just because of the answering machine,

but because it is so late at night. I'm calling because I'm stuck in IKEA, and that's the other reason I know that you're not available. Because I can see the help desk is empty because it's three in the morning, and I can hear the rats. not, because I can see the help desk is empty because there's three in the morning, and I can hear the rats. Anyway, I only came here to buy some mugs, because I don't know where to buy mugs normally, because where I live, there's not a lot of shops. There's a pizza hut, and a Chiquitos, and an Odeon Cinema, and none of them sell mugs, but they're around

a parking lot, and that's it. So I came to the IKEA to buy the mugs but they are around a parking lot and that's it so I came to the Ikea to buy the mugs and I've got them but the problem is that you've designed it to I have a condition where I don't understand arrows, I've never known where they point because if you think about

an arrow it actually has five points and I'm not sure which one is the main one so So, I've been lost in Ikea all day. Anyway, I think I'm going to die here, because there's a long back holiday weekend, and that's going to be shut for a while.

And I just want you to, I thought I'd use this to record my will. I want to leave my glass eye to Alan. He's always hated it, and I've always hated him. And so I would like it, he would have to come and pick it up in a little envelope, or perhaps the jar. In fact, I'll use one of these jars, just take it off my card,

and I'll leave my house to the church down the road. Not the church. I want to become a part of the church down the road. Not the church. I want you to become a part of the church down the road. I want the vicar to have to perhaps go to my house briefly in between things or something like that. And I leave all of my food to my cat. And I leave all of my cat to my food. Okay, thank you. Goodbye.

Thank you for listening to the second episode. Really appreciate it. Please, as we always say, like and subscribe to the podcast and just give really high ratings. Just a five out of five stars. At this point, honesty doesn't

come into it. We just want to get our voices out there. We don't think enough people are listening to two men talk to each other for a bit. About nothing. About nothing in particular. We don't want your particular. We want you, we don't want your honesty, we want your loyalty.

Hmm. Hmm. We're like a one-party state. Absolutely. So if you believe in a one-party solution, or even if you don't, give us five stars. The point is you have to give us five stars. And we'll see you next episode.

Thank you for listening. And get in touch with the podcast on Twitter at TheBudPod and on email TheBudPod at gmail.com. And let us know your thoughts, your most uncool cool thing, your most libertarian thought of the week, your most authoritarian thought of the week, or just any thought you have on... Any contributions at all. Yeah. I mean, we'll read them. We'll read them all. We won't reply to them.

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